"I told him before I told anyone else," Hazelton said. "I felt like I owed him."

Hazelton has been in center of plenty of controversy during his junior year.

A letter written by Dexter Hazelton, Vidal's father, to Pete Carroll surfaced on the Internet earlier this season. In the letter, Dexter Hazelton questions the USC medical staff's attentiveness to injuries Hazelton suffered in USC's season opener against Virginia and injuries he played with as a sophomore.

Against Virginia, a game he started, Hazelton caught five passes for 33 yards. Since that game, he's appeared in seven of USC's 11 games, catching just one pass for five yards against Stanford.